Music Listening During Life Transitions

In this chapter we will explore the ways that music listening can operate during life transitions. One way to realise this possibility is by considering music as a reflective tool that mirrors our lives (DeNora 2000). Meaningful songs can assemble a potent and authentic narrative, albeit with a safe detachment from the precise details of our personal experiences. Despite rich sociological theory underpinning this idea, many researchers have privileged a more concrete relationship between music and our lives, focusing on associations between aspects of our identity and our musical preferences (Dys et al. 2017). These investigations are fascinating (for example, I like pop music and I seek popularity), but limited by the necessity of capturing a single instant in time. Typically reliant on self-reported data in response to predetermined questions, these studies often aim to spotlight features of music genres rather than the moments themselves. A prevailing assumption in much of this research is that our identities remain fixed, however, recent research has moved to highlight the embodied, situated and dynamic ways that musical identities evolve (MacDonald and Saarikallio 2022), especially as we navigate diverse identities and traverse significant life junctures.